{"id":32439,"date":"2023-08-12T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-12T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/89655f6c-d8fe-45f8-84ad-c6de00c2fac1"},"modified":"2023-08-12T19:39:42","modified_gmt":"2023-08-12T17:39:42","slug":"ai-becoming-sentient-is-risky-but-thats-not-the-big-threat-heres-what-is","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/ai-becoming-sentient-is-risky-but-thats-not-the-big-threat-heres-what-is\/","title":{"rendered":"AI becoming sentient is risky, but that\u2019s not the big threat. Here\u2019s what is\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Prof Shannon Vallor\n <\/p>

Published: Saturday, 12 August 2023 at 17:00 PM<\/p>

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The release of OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT<\/a> has generated a flood of commentary, in the media and scientific circles, about the potential and risks of artificial intelligence (AI)<\/a>.<\/p>

At its core, ChatGPT is a powerful version of the large language model known as GPT. GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer: a type of machine learning model that extracts patterns from a vast body of training data (much of it scraped from the Internet) to generate new data composites (such as chunks of text) using the same patterns.<\/p>

CEOs of AI companies, politicians and prominent AI researchers are now publicly sounding alarms about the potential of tools like GPT to pose an existential threat to humanity. Some claim that GPT may be the first \u2018spark\u2019 of artificial general intelligence, or AGI \u2013 an achievement predicted to entail the arrival of sentient, conscious machines whose supreme intellects will doom us to irrelevance.<\/p>

But as many more sober AI experts have observed, there\u2019s no scientific basis for the claim that large language models are, or ever will be, endowed with subjective experiences \u2013 the kind of \u2018inner life\u2019 that we speak of when we refer to conscious humans or other creatures for whom intelligence and sentience go hand in hand, such as dogs, elephants and octopi.<\/p>

Everything we know about sentience is incompatible with a large language<\/a> model, which lacks any coupling with the real world beyond our text inputs. Sentience requires the ability to sense and maintain contact with the multidimensional, spatiotemporally rich, flowing world around you, through sensorimotor organs and an embodied nervous system that\u2019s coupled with the physical environment. Without this coupling to reality, there\u2019s nothing to feel, nothing to be grasped, no reality to form as a stable subject within.<\/p>

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AI is causing real problems, right now, from algorithmic discrimination and disinformation to growing economic inequality and environmental costs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>

Does that mean AI is nothing to worry about? Some AI leaders, like Prof Yann LeCun<\/a>, draw that conclusion. Their view is that today\u2019s AIs are unlikely to lead to AGI, so they pose no grave threat to humanity. Unfortunately, these techno-optimists are also wrong. The threat is very much there. We\u2019ve just fundamentally misunderstood (or, in some cases, perhaps willfully misrepresented) its nature.<\/p>

AI without the capacity to think is more dangerous than AI with it. What threat could AI possibly pose without minds or agency? In asking this question, we forget that an impostor can be more dangerous than a competitor.<\/p>

Human survival is not endangered by AI, at least not for reasons involving machine sentience. But extinction is not the only risk. Losing the humane capacities that make our mode of existence worth choosing and preserving is another.<\/p>

Imagine that aliens landed tomorrow and offered us a choice:<\/p>

Option A:<\/strong> They invade Earth and we take our chances resisting.<\/p>

Option B:<\/strong> They leave the planet alone, but only after replacing us with doppelgangers that carry on all the usual human-like activities (eating, talking, working) with no capacity for independent thought or creative vision, no ability to break from the patterns of the past and no motives beyond the efficient replication of the existing order.<\/p>

Is Option B the better choice? Or is it worse than the peril of extinction?<\/p>

I\u2019m not worried that today\u2019s AIs will turn into these mindless doppelgangers. I\u2019m worried that we<\/em> will. We\u2019re already willingly giving up the humane capacities that ChatGPT lacks.<\/p>

Boosters of AI-powered writing apps are advertising, as a benefit, the chance to surrender the most important part of storytelling \u2013 envisioning where a story might go \u2013 to a bot that will simply present us with plausible preformed plot twists to choose from. People are lining up to thank the \u2018innovators\u2019 who show us how to train ChatGPT to write like we would, so that we may be liberated from the task of forming and articulating our thoughts.<\/p>

The philosopher Hans Jonas<\/a> warned us of the existential risk of a future \u2018technopoly\u2019 that celebrates the \u201cquenching of future spontaneity in a world of behavioural automata,\u201d putting \u201cthe whole human enterprise at its mercy.\u201d He didn\u2019t make clear whether these automata will be machines or people. I suspect the ambiguity was intended.<\/p>

Companies are now replacing scriptwriters, artists, lawyers and teachers \u2013 people who have crafted their talents over decades \u2013 with machines that produce output that\u2019s \u2018good enough\u2019 to pass for the labours of our thinking. The replacement is worrying, but far more concerning is the increasingly common argument that thinking is work we should be happy to be rid of. As one Twitter user put it: what if the future is merely about humans asking the questions, and letting something else come up with the answers?<\/p>

That future is an authoritarian\u2019s paradise. Self-governance \u2013 not just the ability, but the desire and will to author our own stories \u2013 is the enemy of unaccountable power. Forcibly suppressing human agency is a lot harder than convincing people that the treasure they hold is worthless.\u00a0<\/p>

AI is causing real problems, right now, from algorithmic discrimination and disinformation to growing economic inequality and environmental costs. And these demand urgent solutions. But in terms of a future without humanity, AI isn\u2019t a threat. In fact, a future with sentient machines who think with us could, in principle, be every bit as good \u2013 and humane \u2013 as a future without them. <\/p>

The question is what kind of moral, intellectual and political value system the economic power behind today\u2019s AI will be used to sustain: one where thinking matters? Or one where it doesn\u2019t?<\/p>

The talk about existential risk from AGI is a magician\u2019s distraction from what\u2019s going on right in front of us \u2013 not a mechanical uprising, but a silent campaign to devalue the political and cultural currency of humane thought. <\/p>

That\u2019s the endgame. <\/p>

Our humanity is the stake.<\/p>

Read more:<\/strong><\/p>